Happy Monday all! It’s kind of a depressing one because last Monday I was drinking a Not Your Mother’s Apple Pie beer (or 4) in the sunshine with loved ones..and this Monday…is so different. Day 1 of potty training my soon to be 3 year old. I have this deadline in my head where she needs to be potty trained by June 22. My oldest was potty trained a few months before she turned 3..so I am already behind. I have had her in pull-ups for a long time now and just needed to suck it up and put the big girl panties on (her AND me!) and just DO IT.
Why have I been putting this off you ask? Why would I wait until a few weeks before her birthday to finally get her out of diapers? Well if you are a mom who has potty trained your child you know the exact answer to this question. You have to put life on hold and stare at them all day to make sure they don’t pee all over your house. And ask them every 15 minutes if they have to pee. And make sticker charts and promise them money, candy, new toys, a new car right when they turn 16. Whatever it takes you will give it to them!
So today, life has been put on hold. I focus just on my little ones bladder control. I’m hoping for the best so we don’t have to spend too many days like this. The house is going to turn into chaos it just takes too long! I have to let my OCD go (and let the house go) because the payoff to her being potty trained will be so great. She is only been awake about four hours and she has already peed 5 times (one time was on my carpeted stairs but the other times we made it to the potty yay!). They pee so often at this age!
It’s so funny how invested you become and potty training. When they fail at it, you feel like you failed. The disappointment I felt when she peed herself today was kind of hilarious. I wanted to cry. I asked her one minute prior if she had to pee and she said no. And then she peed herself. I was mad at myself for not running her to the potty anyways!
I realize I have not blogged in a couple weeks and then when I finally do I am sitting here ranting about potty training. But this is my life. And when you have kids these are the things you invest your time in. I have not had time to blog or craft lately, life just got in the way. It hit me last night when my oldest asked me if I was ever going to craft again. It kind of made me sad because I realized I have not put in much time towards my hobbies, even exercising the past couple weeks. But I will get back on track! I ate a healthy breakfast and got a little exercise in this morning. I have lots of healthy food in my fridge. When I take care of myself physically I feel amazing mentally so I know I need to get that back on track. As for crafting, I plan on putting my stuff in a flea market a couple times this summer. Even though I have to get there super early in the morning it will be nice to get out and now I’m doing something for myself. And if I sell some of my vases, that is a bonus! If I don’t, I will still be happy I went. It will be a fun atmosphere for me.
This is life, especially as a mom. Sometimes you focus a lot on yourself, sometimes most of your focus is on your kids, your chores, your family. And then all the sudden a gap opened up where you realize you do have that time to spend on just yourself. I miss blogging about fitness and fashion and all of that, and I know I will get back to that very soon, when I feel glamorous again. But for now, kids are my priority. I can’t wait to kiss those diapers goodbye!
Okay, time for me to go ask my kid if she has to pee again 😀 wish me luck, and I wish you all the best of luck on your week and staying positive and enjoying the beautiful weather.

Cooking for me has been quite the journey. Sometimes all I want to do is cook, and sometimes the thought of it ticks me off because let’s be honest..cooking a good homemade meal can be extremely time consuming. I am so inconsistent I swear! My poor husband probably doesn’t understand why sometimes he comes home to seven course meal and other times I am like can I just make you a really good salad? The days I am crafting a ton or doing a lot of activities with my girls I actually resent that I have to feed my clan multiple times a day. They always want something!!
Anywho..what I like to cook also changes periodically ( mostly because my taste buds are all over the place ) ..earlier this year all I wanted to do was cook Asian dishes. Sesame Chicken was my favorite..with Mongolian Beef coming in at a close second.. if you search my cooking posts I am sure you will find the links to both of those!
Last week I was into the middle eastern food, if you read my previous post about Mother’s Day you will see all of the fun things I made! I am still on a tabouli kick. I also love making the homemade naan. I even bought a ton of garlic yesterday because I want to try to make that garlic sauce that they dip the naan in to. I have had it at restaurants and they make it so delicious I really hope I can master this one at home to! These past couple weeks I have also been into making the homemade pasta. I needed some practice at making homemade pasta dough, so I figured why not do it since I have the time! I ended up making potsticker-like pasta. I have to be honest I didn’t even know what potstickers were until I made them and had a friend try them and she said that’s what they tasted like! I had to Google it just to see what these are all about ha!! I usually boil the homemade ravioli like noodles but I was scared that the dough was too thin this time so I ended up frying them and it ended up being the most amazing thing I have ever tasted! I topped him with melted butter mixed with parmesan but they were good even without that topping. They were so good that I had to make more dough today and make a bunch to freeze! That way whenever I crave them I can throw a few on the pan. Making homemade pasta is very time consuming but for me it is therapeutic. You just need patience and a few hours of free time. I use: 4 cups flour, 2-3 eggs, 1 tsp olive oil, and I add (slowly) as much water as it takes to get a nice firm dough. For the filling I fried a little over 1 lb of pork with garlic and salt in a pan. After that was fully cooked I drained it and added it to a bowl with one egg, breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, thyme, and rosemary. After this I rolled the pasta out to the right thickness and used a plastic cup to make circles in the dough and stuffed them with a pork mixture and closed them by hand. I learned from my Mom and Grandma how to do this to fancy way, but if you want a simple way to close them you can just fold the circle and half and pinch them closed, or you can use one of those pastry cutters to close it. The way I sid it is called Cassadeti..or Casadedi..the spelling is up in the air for these! It has been a delicious couple of weeks that is for sure. We made noodles with the leftover dough, my daughter was so excited to help make linguine. She did a great job with the pasta machine too. I think it’s important to involve our kids in stuff like this, although it did make the process last a lot longer, she felt like she was really involved and helping. And probably learned a thing or two! I may not be the best pasta teacher, but I’m all shes got 😀

So I am not your usual blogger..I am not trying to portray any kind of image, and I am also pretty painfully honest most of the time. I think seeming to put-together is….boring. So time to be bluntly honest. This whole blogging thing is a bit confusing for me. I see people’s Instagram pages and they mostly portray one type of image. It is either strictly about fitness, cooking, fashion, you fill in the blank. And I just don’t feel there is one thing that defines me, so I look at my Instagram compared to others and it does look a bit scatterbrained. But maybe that’s what I am! And what’s wrong with portraying what I really am, right? Maybe everybody is a little bit all over the place when they first start blogging and eventually I will figure out the things I am most passionate about and talk more about those rather than be all over the place. As for now though..one day all I want to do is talk about my favorite workout, and the next day I may want to blab about fashion! I like reaching a broad spectrum of people. I have always loved talking to all kinds of people. I am very open to all kinds of personalities . And that is what made me a great hair stylist , I feel like I can get on anybody’s level and feel their energy and what they are talking about and really connect with them. Hash-tagging my pictures on Instagram has really helped me reach other people that are interested in the same things as me! I love seeing other people’s craft pages, fashion pages, cooking pages, etc. I feel so inspired by other people. But it also makes me sad because I feel like I’m running out of time everyday to fulfill any of my passions.
I have definitely learned after being a mom for 5 years that you have to squeeze in things that you care about. I had to work out twice today to get one full workout in. But I finished it..and that felt good! It’s important to do these things for yourself! As I have said before, the eating super clean is a struggle for me because I just like to eat what I want when I want. I am sure I will find a way to adjust that as time goes by. There are so many things to work on. I have learned that whether I eat perfect or not it is still important for me to get my exercise in and that even took me a very long time to learn! I used to eat one bad meal and think what what is the point of working out. But my toning exercises do still seem to be working without counting calories or macros. So I’m definitely not one to follow when it comes to fitness! But I do have some great short workouts for people that have kids and are very busy. And they are all by Fitnessblender. I already posted a fitness post with most of my favorites so I won’t link to those again. But I will say my trusty favorites that I do multiple times a week are “Get Madonna arms with this 10-minute workout” by popsugarliving on YouTube. And I love the lower body pilates workouts by FitnessBlender, and also their 5,8, and 10 minute ab workouts. They have some great quick arm workouts with light weights that are great as well.

I just kind of went in circles (per usual aghh!!) but I guess the point of this was to say that it’s okay to be a little bit all over the place sometimes! When I first started this I thought I was going to just make a Blog about fashion, hair, and makeup. But that is not all of me. And it is just not me to hide any version of myself. I want to be able to talk about whatever is inspiring me at that moment. And I think I’m going to do that more often in the future here.

Happy Monday!! I hope everyone had a great day..and those of you that had a case of the Mondays..stop being pessimistic. Monday is a chance to start anew! (sarcasm does not come across well in blogging I noticed..are emojis allowed!? My dry humor needs some emoji assistance.) Nothing felt new about my day..except the new dust particles all over my house..how the heck am I supposed to keep up with all of this dust! The light shines just so in the morning where you can literally see EVERY spec of dust. It drives me insane..and the OCD in me grabs a microfiber cloth and chases after them like they are pokemon…GOTTA CATCH EM ALL!!

It was a gorgeous day outside..I took the girls to the park and realized it is now time to get the sunscreen out. My girls have pink sunkissed skin and as cute as they look with rosy cheeks..mom guilt set in. Time for sunscreen and the dreaded daily showers. They came home sweaty and full of sand. It has been so nice not to be so cooped up inside!! I was getting sooo sick of my Fall clothes too..like was ready to throw them all away. I wish I could totally revamp my wardrobe every season..just throw every piece away and start over. I bet I just described every girls dream.

So as you all know I started my Etsy page..and it’s doing horrible. I don’t really mind because I know these things don’t become successful overnight..but I still have this urge to create things. I have been practicing paper flowers to make a pretty backdrop for behind my daughter’s beds. That should keep me very busy!! Those things are harder than they look! I also decorated more vases for my master bathroom. I tried using spray paint for the first time..and loved it!! Much easier than hand painting. I will do a little bit of both. This project was 5 large vases..so spraying was necessary!! I would have been hand painting those suckers all night! I spray painted my bathroom vanity vases too..they were too light of a gray before. Do you guys like!?!? Next project with be a bath tray with some cute candles and/or bath salts in it.

To start off: I love food. I have always loved food. Even as a little girl I love trying new things. I was constantly thinking of what to put in my belly next! I ate everything that my mom cooked as a child as well. My broad taste buds have really made cooking fun for me as an adult. I love to try new things and new flavors! And although I am Italian, that does not limit what I like to cook. And my fast metabolism has helped me to enjoy all of these different foods without packing on the pounds. All in moderation. I basically like to pick at things all day rather than sitting down and stuffing my face with a huge meal.

I’m hosting Mother’s Day this Sunday and I’m going to do a middle eastern themed dinner. The last Mother’s Day I hosted, I made Italian. The time before that, I made Mexican! Basically I like to mix it up. I also like feeding my family things they aren’t used to eating. I am sure my mom has never made hummus and tabbouleh and naan bread! I have actually never made fresh tabbouleh either, but I’m excited to try. Here is the homemade naan recipe. I’m going to give chicken shawarma a try as well!

This all started last weekend when I had a friend over for dinner. I wanted to make hummus because I had randomly bought pita bread that day at the market! I realized I had no chick peas so I had to search online what the heck else we could dip our pita bread into..that’s when I came across this amazing white bean dip recipe. It has intense flavors of basil, garlic, lemon, and cumin. And blending the feta cheese with the white beans really gave it a nice kick as well! I liked it so much I made it again last night so it would be perfect to eat today. The flavors really blend nicely in the fridge overnight. Plus it tastes way better cold than room temperature. Since I plan on making naan bread for Mother’s Day I figured I would give it a try this morning. It’s good to practice these things first! I don’t need my husband running out to buy pita bread last minute because I messed up in the kitchen! I found a yummy recipe for naan and really had time to let it rise properly. They came out great, but I always regret not rolling the dough out thinner because they really do puff up a bit in the frying pan! The next time I will probably add a smidge of garlic powder to the butter I brushed on them after they were done to give a kick of flavor. If you don’t have time to make naan you can also buy naan pita chips or regular pita chips at your local grocery store! Regular tortilla chips were also great with this white bean dip. Here is the white bean dip recipe.

Wish me luck on my Mother’s Day Extravaganza! I will be making a few things I never have before. I might even try to make lamb koftas with yogurt dressing. There a lot of fun Middle Eastern recipes online try. I hope everyone has a great Mother’s Day! I know I will enjoy it seeing the odd looks on my family’s faces when they see a middle eastern spread in my kitchen! If anybody else will enjoy it my Dad will, because he loves testing his taste buds as well!

Hey all! Did everyone have a good weekend!? I got to get all dolled up for a wedding which is always super fun for a girl! If you followed my previous blog post about how to dress down a fancy dress..well last night I got to wear the tulle dress in all it’s dressy glory! I almost changed before we left because I almost felt like I looked too young..or silly. But then I remembered that I don’t care what people think of what I wear! It made me feel sassy and girly and fun!! I paired it with rose gold accessories from Charming Charlie and my BCBGeneration heels. The shoes were a perfect fit and gave it the perfect kick the dress needed. I think this dress would eveb be appropriate for a less dressy occasion paired with ballet flats. The flats give it a more casual appeal. I got some snapshots at the hall by this beautiful chandelier..I felt like a princess.
And bonus..my hair was working with me! It’s getting longer and it makes me so happy! I want it to grow another 6 inches…I just love love long hair and all of the styling possibilities that come with it. I always curl each section in opposite directions, it helps give a more textured look. If you curl each section away from your face..or each section towards your face, the curls all kind of turn into one big curl by the end of the night.
I can’t wait to get all dressed up again for the next occasion! It sure beat lounging around in yoga pants. Although I am rocking yogas right now..suuuuper comfy.

Hair. To some people, it’s just a bunch of strands on their head and they do their best to avoid having to deal with it. But to me, it’s everything! That was only thing I ever wanted to do after high school was go to cosmetology school and learn to make people beautiful! And I wanted to experiment on my own hair as well of course! And that I did, I tried every color, cut it as short as above my ears.. do I regret it? I really don’t, it all grew back eventually. And the 20 pounds I gained there all came off too :-O! And I’m glad to say I tried it because I could never cut my hair that short again! And thankfully I don’t have the down time that I did in Beauty School to sit and eat takeout restaurant food every day.

If you are scared to try new things to your hair, but you have thought about it, I have found a solution! I recently put pink in my hair and it is washing out fairly quickly. So I looked around my beauty supply and found that they have professional temporary hair mascaras that wash out as soon as you shampoo your hair. I bought a pink and a teal because I do love those two colors! And now I can put a splash of color in my hair anytime I want, with no commitment! I just thought I would share the love with you guys, these come in many collors so if you are wanting to try a pop of color and your hair, try these first! No commitment, but lots of fun! Maybe you want to rock your red lipstick and put a couple strands of red in your hair that day as well, go for it! You can find these hair mascaras on Amazon here! They are called Colorme by Giuliano Professional.

I applied this after blow drying and curling my hair and I just kind of free-hand lightly applied the color with the mascara wand on the strands that I wanted. If you want a lot of it in your hair, pull each strand out that you want colored and hold it with a lot of tension and brush it on. Enjoy!!

Those who know me know I dance to the beat of my own drum. Not in the rebellious way, I do like to follow the rules because I’m a bit of a scaredy cat-worrier at times. But when it comes to fashion, hair, makeup I have always loved to try new things. I do love to stand out in a crowd. They call it attention-whore in this generation, but why does wanting to stand out and make an impact make you an attention whore? I want to reach people, motivate them to dance to their own beat! You love blue lip gloss but scared to wear it? Wear that ish! Rock it at the grocery store even! It will feel invigorating.

I colored my ends pink the other day, and it is washing out at a fast pace. I wanted to embrace the last of my pink hair by wearing a sassy outfit today. If you follow my Instagram you will see I posted a couple pictures of tulle skirts recently, I have been on the search for the perfect tulle skirt! It was hard to find locally because it wasn’t exactly Spring yet, and I was too scared to order one online because I always seem to be disappointed when I try that.
I was shopping at the mall with my girls the other day and I was in Forever 21, and there were two tulle dresses randomly hanging on a rack. One was pink, and an XL. But I saw a black one that caught my eye, and it was in my size and super affordable at 34.99! We have a wedding in a couple weeks and I thought this would be perfect to wear! I can sport the tulle skirt I have been looking for for so long!

But today, I was looking at that that dress thinking why can’t I wear it now, why wait for a special occasion to wear something I so love! I threw on my Converse and my Mossimo jean vest. I even started digging through my hair accessories. I found a headband that I loved but when I put it on it squeezed my head so hard it made me look like I had a balloon on the top of my head. So I cut the elastic part of the headband off and just bobby pinned it in my hair. Perfect!

Don’t be scared to get all dolled up for no reason, it made me feel good today and it can do the same for you! And my girls had fun throwing some dresses on today too, I inspired them to be all girly and fun today!

Also, you can do this to a lot of dresses or skirts that you own, throw on some combat boots or tennis shoes with a jean jacket/vest, leather jacket or whatever and it will make it look more like day-wear rather than an evening look. Now go try something out of your comfort zone! It will feel so good, promise. xo

I couldn’t find the dress I bought in a store online, but here are some other options from Forever 21.

I am not sure if any of you have been following me on this blogging journey..but it was my new years resolution to concentrate on ME this year (when my kids let me hah!), to concentrate on things that make me happy. It was January, a couple months into our new home, and we were finally feeling settled-ish (major ISH) and I had a some free time to take up a hobby. It wasn’t for a couple months that I saw the article on redbook on how to make a rope basket (I also blogged about this.) Well, that was a fun hobby, and I am still working on making a couple yarn-wrapped baskets, but my interest has traveled a bit (still in home décor) but on to vases. I basically just want to decorate vases all day. Like..I would all day if I could and the day gets away from me so fast now because when I am crafting..I am in craft heaven and time flies! I still have been forgetting to fit that workout in at the end of the day..hmm..oops! Need to get back on that. I got 2 days in last week that’s good right!? And scrubbing all that paint that Zola got crafty with out of my carpet all day Monday was like 10 days worth of cardio. So..yeah, I’m good.

Anyway!! Phew..always get off topic. I started wrapping yarn and twine around vases and wine/beer bottles and was super loving it. But one day at Michaels I found myself wandering around the paint section..and thought what the heck, let’s buy a bottle of chalk paint! So I get home and set up my brush, paint, vases, newspaper and what have you (no idea what I was doing but how hard can painting a vase be right!?) and I started painting a vase. WHOA! This was fun. The gliding of the paint across the smooth, glass vase was like therapy! And for 1.49 a 2oz bottle of paint, this is CHEAPER than therapy! Isn’t it funny when you are passionate about something how amazing you can make it sound. Like accountants that love their job could probably make it sound more delicious than an ooey gooey chocolate fudge brownie from TGI Fridays. That sounds so good right about now… Anyway, painting this vase was so fun that I grabbed 2 more and started painting them too, not even knowing what was going to happen after this. Well, that painting extravaganza turned into this right here.

I have been having a lot of fun playing around with different colors and just making a lot of different vases that way I can reach a wide variety of people! I know not everyone likes bright yellow and turqouise, so I will have some neutral options too. Also, I would love for people to know I love making custom items as well. Example: someone likes a purple vase I made but their bathroom is coral instead..so they can message m and ask for this same type of vase but in coral. And I will say, YES..YES I would love to!! I would love making a piece knowing someone will be enjoying it in their home or as a centerpiece for a party they are throwing. Or maybe someone is having a baby or a housewarming party..or whatever! A custom vase would be a great gift. I love homemade, thoughtful gifts like that. And I love giving them to the people I love as well.

Moral of this story is, the new year has brought me 2 hobbies that I love, blogging and crafting. If nothing more comes of it than it just being a hobby, then I will still be fulfilled..because I truly found something to do with my spare time that makes me HAPPY And that is really what is important in life.

Therr are a couple of projects that I have been working on this week, they will be up on my etsy site soon! To see what I already have on there visit http://www.craftybeachdecor.etsy.com

You know how you have some days where you just feel like you are slaying everything, you are just going to kill it no matter what you do? Well yeah, today was the complete opposite of that. My almost 3yo daughter decided instead of sitting and watching Mickey Mouse quietly like an angel sent from heaven to me.. while I was in the basement, that she would creep into my craft room and become a famous painter. I am talking acrylic paint all over the door, my vases, and all over my brand new carpet. Oh yeah, it was all over her too! So since it is water based paint, it came off her no problem! The carpet was a whole another ordeal. I tried everything under the sun to get the stuff out and I only got it about 75% out. I just feel like a major #momfail today! Definitely need to start baby proofing the house again now that she is at that age that she wants to get into everything! I could have sworn she was quietly watching Mickey the whole time too haha! Luckily it happened in the craft room, which is a spare bedroom that nobody sees. I guess it could have been worse, she could have gotten it in her eyes or eaten it right?! My husband is all “don’t stress, lesson learned” and…umm NO… I am over here for hours scrubbing my carpet with everything under the freaking sun. The guy had to come home and peel my away from scrubbing the same areas over and over. I had so much water and solution in this carpet that my Mom had to come suck it out with her carpet cleaning machine! ( I know there is a real word for said machine, but my brain is fried today! Inhaled too many cleaning agents.)

Anyway, when something like this happens I just have to blame myself. It is our job to keep things away from my kids so they don’t end up hurting themselves or making a mess that we are going to spend 12 hours cleaning, and I right! I just had a meltdown today after the past few months not being used to all of these unexpected things happening! One of the girls cuts the other ones hair, spit all over the TV and smeared around with their hands thinking it’s funny, spitting on the couch, writing on each other’s face with pen…hat’s when I just have to pick the kids up in the car and drop them off at one of the grandparents house so I can have a couple hours to breathe!

Staying at home, and being a homebody has its perks but its downfalls as well! The longer I am home the more chances we have of making huge messes around here! And it is easy to obsess over trying to keep it clean. Don’t get me wrong I loooove being home!! I just am not a fan of chasing my kids around with wet rags, a vacuum, and a broom. And hearing myself nag at them all day “why do you have to spill everything, please wash your hands, why are you doing that, stop taking toys from your sister, stop dumping all of your toys in a pile just to grab one and walk away from the mess” (the list goes on and on until I cannot stand the sound of my own and seriously ponder how my husband can stand the sight of me) (please hubby, still love me..the girls just make me crazy please hang around long enough for them to grow a bit so you can see I can still be a normal, sane, happy, and fun human being). Thank goodness warm weather is here and we can start getting out more! They can go be reckless in a public place that I don’t have to clean afterwards! 😀 and being in public reminds me that other people’s kids are little animals as well. Maybe the only advice I need at the end of this is to just learn to BREATHE. Oh and drink more wine. Cheers!